Dear OpenMW and Modding Community,
Super new to modding and I've yet to successfully implement one of my 3D Models, so forgive my ignorance. I edited the ridiculous Nordic Battleaxe mesh and now want to implement it. I see the game object, its stats, and its respective vanilla mesh in the object window in the CS, but how do I get my edited mesh to take its place without overwriting the old one. Maybe I'm going about this all wrong, I don't know... again, I'm super new to this and this is my first time even opening OpenMW-CS.
If someone with experience in the implementation department could just walk me through, step-by-step, how to get my edited .nif on the original object in game it would be highly appreciated.

I understand the confusion,
'A' is what I want to do. I want the original object in game to have my mesh instead. What I meant by "without overwriting the old one," was lose the original mesh(by just naming them the same and overwriting it in the data folder) but I now realize how stupid that is because I can just make copies and backups. Again, I apologize as this all very new for me.

Thank you so much, Inatvand

Edit: GOT IT! I just dropped my mesh into the mesh folder and replaced the Nordic Battleaxe's model in the object window with mine from the meshes window. SWEET! The only issue I'm noticing is the contorted textures(I fully anticipated this, I'm not that stupid) and they are white and shiny. What can I do to fix the shiny plastic effect?

Awesome thanks,
Here's what the mesh looks like compared to the old one(http://imgur.com/a/cWaDg). You can see that it's in-game just fine but it looks plastic and I'm not sure if it has to do with the mesh or texture or object data. Note that I never changed anything other than the mesh.